Friday, April 01, 2005

I had to pass along this news a former Madisonian sent to the e-mail list of the Ten Percent Society, a gay organization at the University of Wisconsin:

I wanted to alert you to a problem that I recently experienced with Amazon.com when ordering books for a grad course on Queer Visual Culture course and some books of personal interest in this field.

I just received part of an order I recently placed online including the following items:

* Outlaw Representation : Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art* The Drag King Book* No Future: Queer Theory And The Death Drive* In A Queer Time And Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives

When I opened the package, I found three unrequested and unwanted Gideon Bibles inserted with my books. Needless to say, I was extremely unhappy with this unwanted proselytizing and sent an angry email demanding to know why this happened and telling them that if it ever happens again, I will no longer be purchasing books from them.

These books discuss the place of queers in film, performance art, and society as a whole.

I have already passed this along PlanetOut and the Seattle Times. Please distribute widely.

If Amazon sent four books on queer theory and only three Bibles, then it seems to me queer theory is ahead 4-3. It would be funny if there were some kind of mixup, and this guy got Gideon Bibles while nightstands in three hotel rooms somewhere got copies of The Drag King Book.